The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

Gemini 4 Carbon vs Step-3.5-Flash

Gemini 4 Carbon leads the LLM Stats Score 59.0 to 36.5.

Google · StepFun · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Gemini 4 Carbon leads the overall LLM Stats Score 59.0 to 36.5, ranking #2 overall.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Gemini 4 Carbon

  • overall performance matters — it scores 59.0 and ranks #2 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

Choose Step-3.5-Flash

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Gemini 4 Carbon
Google
Step-3.5-Flash
StepFun
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
59.0
#2
36.5
#94
Reasoning
54.9
#5
36.5
#94
Coding
48.1
#3
20.5
#120
Agents
46.0
#2
15.0
#115
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.40 / M
Context window
—
65,536

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Gemini 4 Carbon
Step-3.5-Flash
Tool use
35.8#3
13.2#122
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

16 reported for Gemini 4 Carbon · 7 for Step-3.5-Flash

No common benchmarks found

Gemini 4 Carbon and Step-3.5-Flashdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Step-3.5-Flash specifies input context (65,536 tokens). Only Step-3.5-Flash specifies output context (8,192 tokens).

Google
Gemini 4 Carbon
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
StepFun
Step-3.5-Flash
Input65,536 tokens
Output8,192 tokens
Fri Oct 30 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Gemini 4 Carbon supports multimodal inputs, whereas Step-3.5-Flash does not.

Gemini 4 Carbon can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Gemini 4 Carbon

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Step-3.5-Flash

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Gemini 4 Carbon is licensed under a proprietary license, while Step-3.5-Flash uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Gemini 4 Carbon

Proprietary

Closed source

Step-3.5-Flash

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Gemini 4 Carbon was released on 2026-10-28, while Step-3.5-Flash was released on 2026-02-02.

Gemini 4 Carbon is 9 months newer than Step-3.5-Flash.

Gemini 4 Carbon

Oct 28, 2026

-1 days ago

8mo newer
Step-3.5-Flash

Feb 2, 2026

8 months ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Gemini 4 Carbon and Step-3.5-Flash side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Gemini 4 Carbon
✓ Preferred
Step-3.5-Flash
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Gemini 4 Carbon vs Step-3.5-Flash.

Which is better, Gemini 4 Carbon or Step-3.5-Flash?

Gemini 4 Carbon leads the LLM Stats Score 59.0 to 36.5. Gemini 4 Carbon is made by Google and Step-3.5-Flash is made by StepFun. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Gemini 4 Carbon compare to Step-3.5-Flash in benchmarks?

Gemini 4 Carbon scores Gray Swan IPI Benchmark: 100.0%, Vending-Bench 2: 100.0%, Graphwalks BFS >128k: 96.2%, WebDev Arena: 88.4%, SEC-bench Pro: 88.2%. Step-3.5-Flash scores AIME 2025: 97.3%, Tau-bench: 88.2%, LiveCodeBench v6: 86.4%, IMO-AnswerBench: 85.4%, SWE-Bench Verified: 74.4%.

What are the context window sizes for Gemini 4 Carbon and Step-3.5-Flash?

Gemini 4 Carbon supports an unknown number of tokens and Step-3.5-Flash supports 66K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Gemini 4 Carbon and Step-3.5-Flash?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (59.0 vs 36.5), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Gemini 4 Carbon and Step-3.5-Flash?

Gemini 4 Carbon is developed by Google and Step-3.5-Flash is developed by StepFun.

Related comparisons